Table of Contents
Ed Young is a contributor for the Atlantic. I Contain Multitudes is his fascinating book about the story of microbes, their origins and functions, our relationship with them so far, and how this relationship will develop in the future.
Friendly Fire
We usually think of microbes as inconveniences. We may wonder how much more pleasant life would be without them. Thanks to microbes, we get sick, and worse, we are always paranoid. To avoid getting sick, we need to wage war on these invisible enemies, recruiting the best chemical soldiers that we can find. So, we live in fear, we over sanitize ourselves, our homes, and our food. In short, microbes make us miserable.
But Ed Young tells us a different side of the story. Without microbes, life would not be possible. Microbes have been around for much longer than humans, they existed in single-cell organisms. They are so small that a head of a pin can fit one million of them. So, what are they up to? They’re busy breaking down molecules. That is why soil gets enriched. And microbes were the first to convert energy from sunlight to turn carbon dioxide into sugar and water (photosynthesis). They then eat this sugar and release oxygen, which sustains life.
Beyond Good and Evil
Each person has a microbiome (complex microbial communities). In fact, we are mostly made out of microbial cells. And while each person has a different microbiome, the microbial communities perform the same jobs for everyone. Like any natural ecosystem, each community has a dominant microbe that acts like the leader, making sure that things function well. Some microbes balance the acidity levels in one part of the body, for example.
There are millions of microbes that are good for us, but only around one hundred that can harm us, yet we are obsessed with antibacterial cleaning products. And there isn’t even such a thing as good or bad microbes. Like most things, it depends on the context. If a microbe that is responsible for regulating gut health got onto our skin and infected a wound, this would create many problems for us.
Barriers are important. A barrier will keep microbes in its proper environment. Insects can do this relatively well, but things get harder when it comes to bigger, more complex animals. For humans, our microbes don’t live in our organs, they live around them, and our body sets the right conditions so that only the helpful and appropriate microbes can live there. Our guts have powerful acids that make life possible for only a small number of bacteria. Another way we defend ourselves is through mucus. Our mucus carries bacteriophages – domesticated viruses that feed on the microbes that harm us. Finally, we have immune systems which create white blood cells that catch any unwelcome microbes.
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In Good Health
If you want a healthy body, don’t be a germaphobe. You need to have a properly regulated immune system. If your immune system is under reactive, then it only activates when faced with major threats. This kind of immune system is susceptible to infectious diseases that are ignored. But if we have an immune system that is over reactive, it can cause us harm by attacking harmless microbes like pollen, or our own good bacteria. This kind of immune system is susceptible to allergic disease.
Exposing ourselves to microbes can help us regulate our immunity. But a modern lifestyle minimized our exposure to bacteria. To avoid infectious diseases and allergic diseases, we need to have been exposed to enough microbes in childhood, when exposed to dirt, mud, and dust. But if we grew up in an over sanitized environment, this kind of exposure was unlikely.
To help our good bacteria survive, we need to make dietary changes. It becomes hard for bad microbes to live in our gut when we have many good microbes competing for nutrients. This kind of healthy competition can be triggered with a diverse diet. Fruit and vegetables are great for this. When food is plant-based, it is tougher to digest than processed foods, and that is what most microbes want – making us healthier.
The next step in healthcare should be to promote our microbiomes, or microbial engineering. But it is difficult to do this since microbiomes are so large. For example, eating probiotic yogurt may not have a noticeable effect because its microbial cultures are not natural to the guy, so they may not survive. But introducing a full microbiome can save lives. This is what some projects and academic initiatives are trying to do. It isn’t just our health that is affected by bacteria, but so is our mood and our behavior. This poses interesting questions for people who think we have free will.